Thank you, Minister. Thank you, everyone, for joining us.

Someone sent me a message which I thought was interesting enough to share, and the message read, Prime Minister, we haven’t seen you in all that have been said. Well, let me say it in this way, there is a government that is made up of ministers, heads of entities, permanent secretaries, various public officers and administrators, and they all must do their jobs. And my job at times is to ensure that they are all well-coordinated and that they’re all doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

Sometimes you are leading from the front and sometimes you are quarterbacking, as the Americans would say, but there is never an absence of leadership, and I’m certain that you would’ve seen on display the ministers taking responsibility for their various portfolios as it relates to preparedness for the approaching weather event. This is a good segue because during this administration, you would’ve seen the country at risk at several weather events and other kinds of threats, including a pandemic, and we have generally handled them all very well. I believe that our administration has managed crises very well and has ensured that we not only withstand the threats and the crises, but we recover and recover quickly and stronger than before.

The weather events are becoming more frequent, but the frequency is also paralleled with greater intensity. We’re seeing more weather events, which are more intense in nature, but we’re also seeing these kinds of events overlapping, so you’re seeing more weather events that are of increasing intensity, but before one is finished, another one is coming, so they are overlapping. The administration has to have a standing policy and strategy to deal with crises that are more frequent, more intense and overlapping, and that is why we have taken a very systematic approach to dealing with these issues. There is an existing legislative framework which guides how we respond to crises that we term disasters, and that is the Disaster Risk Management Act, and that is the framework within which we will operate. Certainly, there are constitutional provisions under emergency powers, but it is at this time not our intention to utilise those powers. We would’ve heard from ODPEM in our briefing session before this, and ODPEM will give us an assessment shortly as to whether or not the government should declare a disaster or a threat of a disaster. I think you know what will happen that given the update from the Met Office that Jamaica is at risk, there is a threat of the weather event affecting us in a significant way.

The latest report suggests that the eye of the hurricane would be the weather system. It’s not yet a hurricane. The system is about 220 miles southeast of Kingston, Jamaica. It is still moving very slowly, and that has posed a difficulty for us in planning because you don’t want to put your preemptive measures too early; people get frustrated and say it’s not going to come, and then they go back to normal activity, and then it comes so we have been trying to calculate when to put in the preemptive measures. You would’ve seen that we took an early preemptive measure yesterday by suspending schools, and today, I believe it is at 2:00 PM that the public sector will be asked to go home. I suspect the private sector will follow suit. So we’re really trying to gauge, and there is a reason why we have to be very careful in gauging. Beryl, when it hit Jamaica, cost us about $57 billion of our 2023 GDP, and it probably cost us about 0.5% in terms of a reduction in our GDP growth, so it will have an impact. We don’t want to exacerbate the impact by taking actions that will reduce commerce, reduce business too early, so it’s a real guessing game, and it requires us meeting, analyzing, getting all the data so that we make the right decisions. I know that there might be some frustration in the public, but bear with us because we can’t make any mistakes with the measures that we put in place.

Under the Disaster Risk Management Act, when the orders are proclaimed, which we expect that we will do a declaration possibly the end of today or sometime early tomorrow. The Act will give certain powers that the administration and the various entities that are vested with these powers will use for the protection of life and property, and we ask the public to cooperate. And you can be assured that before any of these measures are taken, there will be consultation with the stakeholders, and there will be adequate public notice so that everyone will know. We do ask for your cooperation.

We will take one other measure, which is under the Trade Act, to prevent any price gouging that might take place. The Minister of Health guided you properly to say, stick with healthy foods that won’t perish as a result of lack of refrigeration, and he did mention sardines and water crackers, but I saw a picture recently of shelves in our supermarket and all the bread is gone. People are taking precautions, stocking up on food, but it leads to a very important point that as these products become scarce, there may be persons tempted to raise their prices, and we will not have that during a disaster, and therefore, the Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce will shortly sign an order to this effect to prevent price gouging.

Now, you would’ve heard extensive reports from Minister Vaz, the JPS, and from Minister Samuda and the NWC, and from the utility companies that they are projecting that, as a result of the experience of Beryl, they will be in a better position. Evidence of that is that I am told that 31 line workers/ linemen are already in Jamaica, and others are being flown in as we speak, so the intention is to be ahead of the recovery effort should we be impacted in any significant way from this.

I am told as well that the necessary precautions have been taken to ensure that telecommunications remain functional. Minister Samuda has advised that we will be able to have an uptime of about 80% within 72 hours of the hurricane for most customers, and that they have taken measures to control turbidity by closing off some of the intakes into their major water storage. This, they are able to do because already those storage areas are full, so they can control and manage that. We are expecting that if the event is a Beryl scale event, then we should be able to keep these services throughout as long as possible throughout the weather event, if it does impact Jamaica.

I’ll make another statement here, which is of importance. During hurricane Beryl, the loss of telecommunications was not so much because of the impact of the hurricane itself, but there was significant theft of fuel and equipment relating to telecommunications. We have indicated that we intend to amend the law to have stiffer penalties and to criminalise some of these acts because they do impact the entire economy and should be treated with more severely.

In lieu of the amendments to the law, the security forces have been alerted that special attention ought to be paid to these critical infrastructure, which are necessary for the continuity of government and for the continuity of business and indeed for public safety. Commissioner of Police, you have been tasked specifically to ensure that there is no break in our telecommunications, and to ensure that these criminals who would want to take advantage of the disaster to exploit our telecommunications infrastructure, that they are dealt with in the harshest way.